


Strangers in the Night

by this_is_a_love_story (diner_drama)



Category: Fleabag (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-11
Updated: 2020-02-11
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:14:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22667611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/diner_drama/pseuds/this_is_a_love_story
Summary: Masquerade ball. You're not allowed to show your face or tell anyone your name. It's very intense. It's very, veryerotic.Across a crowded room, the priest and the libertine make eye contact, and time stops for just a moment.
Relationships: Fleabag/Priest (Fleabag)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 67





	Strangers in the Night

Masquerade ball. You're not allowed to show your face or tell anyone your name. It's very intense. It's very, very _erotic_.

Across a crowded room, the priest and the libertine make eye contact, and time stops for just a moment.

He looks away, down at the drink in his hands, clears his throat uncomfortably, but, despite himself, is compelled to raise his gaze once more. She turns up a corner of her painted mouth into a knowing smirk, then allows herself to be drawn away into conversation. He looks at her back for a long, helpless eternity, the deep plunge of her sequinned red dress drawing his eye, only to look hurriedly away when she sends him a genuine smile over her shoulder. She feels his eyes on her and stands a little straighter, smiles a little warmer, plans how to make her approach.

They work their way around the room separately, exchanging glances more often than not. She shines like a blood moon, beautiful and foreboding in equal measure, and the idea of falling into her orbit sends a thrill of fear down his spine.

The ballroom is ornate and ancient, exactly the kind of place you would imagine for a masquerade. The nameless, faceless ladies and gentlemen talk in hushed whispers as the band plays a slow waltz, a few couples here and there, twirling together to the rhythm like leaves caught in the wind. The stately home they are standing in is enormous and probably haunted, with endless corridors and hunting trophies leering from every wall. He feels absolutely out of place here, but with the anonymity of the mask, there's no way for the crowd to know. He could be anyone.

He's heartened by this thought and drains his drink, reaching for another just to have something to do with his hands.

"Hello," says a voice in his ear, and he drops the glass.

"Fuck!" he exclaims, kneeling down to start clearing up the broken glass, then "Fuck!" once again as he cuts himself.

"Jesus," she says, kneeling down to help him, holding a tissue from her purse to his wounds. He startles when he looks up into a pair of inviting brown eyes, all the more captivating up close.

"Hello," he breathes. She smirks.

"Do you think champagne has enough alcohol in it to sterilise a wound?" she asks, dabbing at his bleeding hand.

"Uh." He shakes his head to clear it, the strange stillness of the evening and the sight of his own blood making him feel disorientated. "Probably not?"

"Thought not," she says flatly, rising to her feet and beckoning for him to follow, as a member of staff bustles up with a dustpan to deal with the debris. 

As if in a trance, he follows her through the maze of strange corridors to an old kitchen - flagstone floor, Aga, and everything. She finds a clean cloth in a drawer and wets it under the tap, then, with sure hands, cleans the cuts on his fingers, illuminated by the unearthly moonlight through the window.

"It's nice of you to do this," he says, keeping watch as she tenderly ministers to his hand.

She shoots him a wry smile, her eyes expressive even behind the mask. "The least I could do, considering it's my fault."

"I don't know, it might have been divine intervention." He hisses as she removes a sliver of glass from his finger and she winces in sympathy.

"Are you saying that God hates champagne?" Having finished her ministrations on his hand, she continues to hold it, rubbing a deliberate caress into his skin, then bends to press a gentle kiss onto the palm, thrillingly intimate.

"He's more of, uh, a red wine kind of guy, I think," he stammers. He takes a deep breath to steady himself as she looks up at him through her eyelashes. "We should probably get back to the-"

"Yeah." Chivalrously, she offers him her arm, and he takes hold of it, trying hard not to feel like a damsel in distress. They make their way back towards the bright light and the hubbub of voices spilling out of the great hall, his fingers hot against her arm like a brand.

"What brings you here tonight?" he asks politely as they apply themselves to the buffet table, glad to be back in public and safe from his own impulses. "Ooh, olives! I love olives, I never get olives."

"I made the food," she grins, picking up a mini quiche. "Might as well get to eat it. You?"

"It's a good charity to support, and I guess I'm just really fucking lonely." He shoves three olives into his mouth at once to prevent himself from saying anything else embarrassing.

"Not the best way to make life-long friendships, since we're not allowed to share our names."

He swallows heavily. "Sometimes it's nice not to be-"

"Yourself?" She understands this, more than it is possible to articulate.

"Yeah." The silence between them is comfortable, intimate. It should be strange, sharing conversation and standing so close, but things that happen at night always feel strange, the moonlight glazing everything with unfamiliarity.

"May I have this dance?" she asks after a while, with a decorous and only mildly sarcastic half-bow.

"Oh, I don't dance," he demurs, waving his hands and scrunching up his nose.

"Even with your guardian angel?"

"Oh, no, no, no," he chuckles, shaking his head. "I don't think you're an angel."

"You don't strike me as an expert on angels."

"I could be a priest for all you know."

She lets out an incredulous peal of laughter. "Priests don't swear like you do."

"Oh, so now you're an expert on priests-"

"I'd recognise that pair of legs anywhere," booms a voice, cutting into their conversation. The voice is attached to a handsome fellow, rather nicely filling out an expensive suit. He greets her with a kiss on the cheek and slides his arm around to rest a hand on her arse. "Might I have this dance, m'lady?" he asks with the confidence of a man with no doubt what the answer will be.

The priest tugs at his own bow tie uncomfortably, the collar of his crisp, new shirt suddenly feeling itchy and tight, and his lips quirk into an uneasy half smile.

Before she can respond, a twitchy, angular woman taps her on the shoulder. "Could you please put out some more of the vegetarian- oh, hello," she breaks off, recognising the new arrival.

"Claire," he says delightedly, turning the scorching force of his attention onto her. "You look like a lawsuit waiting to happen." He eyes her up and down with no subtlety whatsoever, and she somehow becomes even more twitchy, clearly flustered.

"I'm supposed to take that as a compliment, am I?" she says tightly, nonetheless looking rather pleased.

"I was just asking this saucy little minx to put me through my paces, if you know what I mean," he says, leering indiscreetly.

"Oh," says Claire. "Perhaps the mini quiches can wait if you-"

"No," her sister replies firmly, eager to escape the mounting lawyer-on-lawyer sexual tension. "Mini quiches are impatient little buggers. I'm just going to let this... yep."

She peels away, picking up an empty serving platter on her way.

"Oh, let me help you," says the priest, chasing after her retreating back.

"Thanks," she says when he catches up. From a stack of catering boxes in a tucked-away corner, she hands him another tray of delicate pastries. "They are terribly heavy. Can always do with the assistance of a big, strong man."

"Well thank fuck I was here, or all these people would have had to be-"

"Quicheless, yeah."

They work together to re-stock the buffet table, sneaking bites here and there. The noise he makes on tasting the goat's cheese and beetroot filo parcels for the first time borders on the obscene, and the mask does nothing to hide the way her pupils dilate.

"Follow me," she says simply, setting down her dish. She turns, then, and takes his uninjured hand, drawing him after her through the double doors, through the antechamber and into a side room, half the size of the ballroom. He allows himself to be led, the enchantment of the evening settling over him. She gropes for the light switch on the wall, and the bulbs begin to hum and then the room is slowly lit with an increasing warm light.

A grand piano lies under a dust sheet, the wooden boards of the floor stretching away underfoot. Chairs are stacked in neat rows in the corner, and the strains of music from the band next door can still be heard.

"Time for that dance, don't you think?" She steps out of her shoes and pads barefoot across the floor to press close against him.

Bewitched by either the champagne or their solitude, he gives in and rests his hand on the gentle curve of her waist, the red sequins warm against his fingers. She matches his action, her firm touch setting the nerves ablaze on his hip. With her other hand, she takes her time stroking down the length of his arm, only to stop at the wrist, hand hovering just shy of his palm.

"For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch," she murmurs, looking into his eyes.

"And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss," he finishes, taking her hand in his and interlacing their fingers.

The night seems destined to become one of those memories that are polished down to a bright shine by re-treading your steps over them, over and over. They sway together to the music, her hairsprayed curls brushing against his cheek. She fits her body against his, pressing close, her breath raising the hairs on his neck, her perfume filling his senses. He grips her tighter, his solid warmth under her fingers drawing her in. She looks in his eyes after a while, a teasing smirk on her tempting red lips.

"Have not saints lips-" she begins, but is cut off when he kisses her, bringing up his hand from her hip to her cheek and breathlessly pouring himself into her, revelling in her little intake of breath, in the taste of the wine on her lips, finally allowing himself to sink into her embrace.

He breaks off and rests his head against hers as they both gasp in a breath. "I don't do this any more," he murmurs.

"Me neither." She runs her fingers through his short, dark hair and he shudders at the touch. "Good thing we're not ourselves tonight."

Their lips crash together again and he presses her backwards until he can lift her up onto the closed keyboard of the grand piano, hips pulsing together as he sinks his teeth gently into the bared column of her neck. His hand slides up her thigh through the slit in her skirt as she fumbles with his belt buckle. Once unfastened, she slips a hand down the back of his trousers and grabs a handful of his arse, drawing him closer as she devours his mouth. With her other hand, she cups the growing bulge in the front of his shorts, eliciting a strangled groan.

"Do you have a-" he starts, just as she pulls out a condom and throws it at him.

"Where were you even keeping that?"

"Don't ask."

He slips his hands further up under her dress, towards her waist, then pauses, frowning. "Do these knickers reach your _armpits_?"

"Hurry up," she says, palming his hardening cock, "before I turn into a pumpkin."

With a growl, he rips them off and throws them over his shoulder, settling between her legs with a truly wicked smirk, before he buries his head between her spread thighs.

* * *

"I just don't understand how I got a sequin in my ear," he says some time later as they lie sprawled on the floor, panting hard, a sheen of sweat over their bodies. She raises her head from where it's resting on his chest, an absurd shimmer of glitter painting her cheek, and makes a show of examining both of his ears and his nostrils, for good measure. 

"I think you got all of them, if that's any consolation."

"Thanks, he says drily. "How much longer until you vanish in a puff of smoke?"

"Not long," she whispers, leaning in for another kiss, slow and satisfied.

"Do you think I'll see you again?" he says tenderly, cradling her face.

"Who knows?" she murmurs, brushing her lips against his. She stretches, making a face at a twinge in her shoulder, and stands up, graceful and entirely unselfconscious in her nudity. He props himself up on his elbows and watches as she slips back into her underwear and picks up her dress from where they'd laid it carefully on the grand piano.

She steps into the red sequinned dress and shrugs the straps over her shoulders, then pauses when she tries to reach the zip. "Could you-"

"Sure," he replies, jumping up from the floor after pulling on his shorts. Careful not to catch her skin in the zip, he fastens the dress, covering up inch after inch of her warm flesh. He can't help but trail his fingers over her skin, tracing the contours of her back.

She pulls a small mirror and a tube of lipstick from her bag and applies it carefully, lips parted. He starts dressing, wincing as he pulls his trousers on over damp skin. He struggles with the bow tie, crossing the straps uselessly and catching his fingers in the knot.

"Here," she says, unpicking the knot with deft fingers and fastening it into a neat bow, smoothing it against his collarbones. She's standing so close. He can't stop himself from pulling her in for one last, helpless kiss.

"Goodnight," she says as they part, her red lips mere inches from his.

"Goodnight," he breathes.

As she walks out of the room, her high heeled shoes swinging from one hand, she starts to hum a tune. As he watches her disappear into the darkness, he can just make out the words she's singing.

"...exchanging glances, wond'ring in the night, what were the chances..."

He smiles to himself as he turns away. Perhaps their paths will cross again.

**Author's Note:**

> I treasure your comments. What was your favourite line?


End file.
